On the vaccine rollout, ‘who gets what, when, and how’

“Yay for science,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said quietly as famed photographer Annie Leibovitz got the shot, no pun intended.

Hooray, indeed. Science worked. Science — that is, people — managed to do in one year what usually takes 10 to 15 years.

There is science. And there is political science.

Political science is the study of “who gets what, when, and how,” Harold Lasswell, professor of POLS 100 at Wellesley College, said — as good a definition as any I’ve encountered since.

Those who practice politics are in the business of answering those questions.

Rarely is it all as transparent as it is now, with the miracle of the other kind of science, and 50 states and hundreds of counties forced to answer those questions under many microscopes.

The “what” here is nothing less that the gift of life — a riskfree walk through the valley of the shadow of death, a COVID19 get-out-of-jail-free card.

It’s priceless, should you be the one who needs it, worthless if you’re not.

In Florida, a nursing home reportedly used some of its initial supply to attract and reward donors. People were appalled.

There are some things that should not be commodified, like organs and children.

So who gets it? If we were in the original position, what would we say? Give it to those who need it most? Give it to those who we need most? Give it to those who are most adept at dealing with constantly crashing vaccine websites?

Science tells us that older Hispanic and Black Americans have a greater risk of dying of COVID-19.

Should they go first?

Does the Constitution allow it?